Word Counts of the Great Fantasies: Tolkien, King, Martin, Jordan

I’ll be a published author relatively soon after conceiving and writing for six years. I’ve been agonizing over the word count of my first book, Blood & Soul. It’s 160k. I found this entry out there on the internet and thought others might be interested. This does not excuse chubby books. I’ll always strive for lean and mean storytelling. But, the info below made me feel a little better.

If you are curious, here some samples. The numbers are approximate and should omit indexes, appendices and stuff not directly belonging to the text itself.

Discrepancies are often due to the fact that Microsoft Word consider “it’s” like one word, instead my data is measured considering it as “it is”, so two words. This can usually add a plus 5-10k compared to Microsoft Word wordcount.

About Allen Bagby

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